Nazi Germany planned during World War II to infiltrate the Catholic Church with spies, British intelligence revealed Monday.Documents uncovered by the MI5 indicate that the spies were dressed up as monks in order to infiltrate the Vatican.
The Daily Telegraph reported that a Nazi sympathizer residing in Rome formulated the plan in 1943 and won the support of the Third Reich.
Senior officials in the regime saw it as a way to follow the Allied Forces on their way to conquer Italy.
Operation Georgian Convent involved the purchase of a building in Rome by Michael Kedia, a Russian anti communist Nazi sympathizer from Georgia.
"The plan (involved the)...set up of a Georgian cloister in Rome under Vatican protection and among the monks introduce agents who were to keep contact with German intelligence," the MI5 report says.
But the operation was thwarted by Giuseppe Dosi, an Italian policeman who was acting as an informant to the British intelligence service.
Dosi wrote to agents in London that the Nazis intended to set up two rooms "for the use of the agents for storage of transmitters, batteries and any other secret material."
The Nazis believed that dressing up the spies as monks and priests would be the perfect cover due to the Vatican’s neutrality during the war.
Kedia received funds to purchase the building and six agents were sent to pose as monks.
However Vatican officials became suspicious due to the agents’ ignorance of Catholic doctrine and apparent interest in women.
Later the Vatican received confirmation of their suspicions in the form of an anonymous warning, apparently sent by British intelligence.
The agents were sent back to Germany and the Vatican complained to Berlin’s ambassador.
The operation was the second to be revealed by the MI5 after just last week it disclosed that the Nazis also planned to infiltrate the Boy Scouts in order to gain the support of its founder.
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